Search

Monthly Archive for February, 2006

After NTP walked away from a $450 million settlement more than a few eyebrows lifted. People were wondering, how can a company with no overhead, no product, and just a few generic patents not take it and run away laughing all the way to the bank. To put that amount in perspective, $450 million is $200 million more than the revenue of Afghanistan. That $450 million would have been almost pure profit seeing how NTP is just a holding company with no physical assets. The biggest expense would have been the legal fees but even NTP saves on those seeing how the man in charge Donald Stout is a patent lawyer himself. NTPâ€™s public reason for not settling is that they couldnâ€™t hammer out future royalty sales.

You can add additional emails per contact, the main reason for this is that some people have a work and personal email address. Although we have to admit, in our experience the majority of people don’t mind wasting their company’s time unless they work for Big Brother or something.

The president of BellSouth Operations said Monday in Gainesville he wants the “Blackberry” patent case resolved soon.

“We don’t have an opinion one way or another who’s right about the patent issue, our desire is that it just get solved,” Frieson said.

Frieson added that BellSouth markets the “Blackberry”, it’s popular and BellSouth is very concerned about continued sales. Frieson said he hopes that ruling will head off any inconvenience to owners and users.

“There’s some functionality you will actually lose on existing Blackberries,” Frieson said.

Frieson said the devices would still function even if the current patent holder loses the case, but the company is withholding details on that for now.

Yesterday, NTP issued a press release expressing mystification about why RIM balked at terms proposed in December and accusing RIM of misstating the facts. Typical to this case, things are not so black and white. Within hours, RIM elaborated on the reasons it opposes the deal. In an extraordinary move, the company released a confidential document filed with the court as part of its argument for why it hadn’t reached a settlement. The document is the opinion of Roger M. Milgrim, a New York lawyer and patent expert paid by RIM to look at a settlement agreement offered by NTP on Dec. 1.

“Don’t be fooled by NTP’s aggressive stance,” wrote Mark Guibert, a vice-president at RIM, in an e-mail that included Milgrim’s court affidavit. “They are simply trying to convince the court and the public that they’re being reasonable because they don’t want to look like extortionists.”

Because of their ability to generate higher average revenues per user (ARPU), business customers continue to represent one of the most attractive market segments for wireless carriers. As they seek to expand this lucrative subscriber base, carriers need to better understand the dynamics and drivers of corporate wireless buying decisions and tailor their offerings to effectively meet the unique needs of these business users.

In-Stat says that they recently completed an in-depth study based on a survey of more than 600 wireless decision-makers in the United States. More than 40% of the respondent business wireless decision-makers were senior executives (e.g., president, owner, c-level executive) and more than 30% were IT or department managers.

Investments in wireless technology maintained strong growth recently and are bucking the general venture capital investment trends that have witnessed overall decline from 2000 to 2005. The portion dedicated to wireless investments is on the increase, and will continue to do so, hitting an all-time high in 2006, says a new report from visiongain. During 2005, 152 wireless-related companies received US$1.3 billion in funding, a 24% increase over 2004’s US$1.1 billion.

Wireless accounted for 7% of total VC investment last year, a figure that will rise in 2006 and beyond. The bulk of telecom investment today – around 60% – is in wireless and related technology, including networking, infrastructure, semiconductors, mobile computing, content and services.